Crossing Boundaries: Identity Management and
Student/Faculty Relationships on the Facebook
Anne Hewitt and Andrea Forte
GVU Center, Georgia Institute of Technology
th
TSRB, 85 5 Street
Atlanta, GA 30332-0760
anne@gatech.edu, aforte@cc.gatech.edu
ABSTRACT
This poster describes preliminary results from an ongoing
investigation of student/faculty relationships in the online
community Facebook. In spring of 2006, a survey was conducted
in two large courses at a mid-sized public research university to
understand how contact on Facebook was influencing student
perceptions of faculty. We found that contact on Facebook had no
impact on students’ ratings of professors. We found it striking that
one third of the students we surveyed did not believe that faculty
should be present on the Facebook at all. Some raised concerns
about identity management and privacy issues. We discuss the
implications of these findings and the potential for further
research in the area.
whom it purportedly represents, it is difficult to establish precisely
how many legitimate faculty accounts exist. Through personal
contacts, we learned that some faculty members at various
institutions are establishing accounts as a way of connecting with
students. We heard anecdotes about increased communication and
friendlier relationships with students.
Keywords
These observations raised questions: “How are student/faculty
relationships affected by interaction on Facebook, if at all?” and:
“What does the social landscape look like when faculty begin to
frequent an online place where students regularly socialize?”
Because social networking communities are built to support
presentation of self, identity management is likely to be a
significant issue for participants in communities whose
membership crosses perceived social boundaries and
organizational power relationships.
Online communities, social networking software, identity
management
2. QUESTIONS & METHODS
1. INTRODUCTION
Academic communities are places where intricate hierarchies, rich
organizational traditions, and interpersonal ties are supported
through the use of many different communication channels.
(Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 1998). When online communities
begin to complement existing channels for social interaction,
aspects of everyday practices are often cast into sharp relief as
community members integrate new channels of communication
into their daily lives.
Facebook is an online social networking community that has
become popular at academic institutions. Members can create
profiles about themselves, create and join groups with other
members, make “friends,” and share pictures and messages.
Although it is difficult to determine precise adoption rates (the
site has not made quantitative data available on a per-university
basis), Stutzman found 90% saturation among undergraduate
students at one college (2006). A Facebook representative
reported that 85% of students at participating institutions have
accounts and 60% of these log in on a daily basis (Arrington,
2005). Facebook seems to have become a pervasive element of
students’ lives; as such, the potential exists for it to have a
significant impact on social practices in academic environments.
Faculty members are also creating accounts and communicating
with students on Facebook. Because there is no way of knowing
whether a given account on Facebook was created by the person
Copyright is held by authors.
CSCW'06, November 4-8, 2006, Banff, Alberta, Canada
To begin to explore student-faculty relationships on Facebook, we
designed a two-year study, the first half of which has been
completed. In the first year, we conducted a survey both to
investigate links between student perceptions of faculty and
encounters with faculty on the Facebook, and to establish baseline
data about students’ attitudes toward faculty presence on the site.
We recruited participants in two undergraduate courses whose
professors had established Facebook profiles for at least six
months. The survey was announced as a study on student/faculty
relations with no mention of Facebook. The survey first covered
general perceptions of the professor, of teaching style, and of the
class overall. Then participants were asked basic demographic
data such as age, gender, and class attendance. Finally, we
inquired whether or not respondents were on Facebook, and
whether or not they had seen their professor on the site. If they
had, there were several questions about the interaction that took
place. We also asked students if they thought that faculty should
be on the Facebook and why or why not.
3. FINDINGS & DISCUSSION
Of the 176 students enrolled in the classes that were surveyed,
136 students responded (77%). Of those, 106 students (79%) were
on the Facebook. Of the students who were on Facebook, 38
(36%) had seen the professor’s profile, and 20 (19%) were
“friends” with the professor on the site.
Students rated their professors on five facets, which were then
averaged together to get a holistic rating of the professor. We
found that contact with the professor on the Facebook had neither
a significant positive nor negative affect on students’ ratings. (2T
T-Test, 99% confidence) (See also Table 1). The average rating by
students who had not seen their professor on Facebook was 4.7 on
a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 was the highest rating. The average
rating by students who had seen the professor on the Facebook
was also 4.7. Ratings on individual facets also did not vary
significantly for either class.
Table 1: Students’ Ratings of Professors
Contact on the Facebook
Not Seen Friends
Not
Prof.
w/Prof.
Friends
Overall
Rating
Seen
Prof.
Low (1-2)
0
< 0.1%
0
< 0.1%
Mid (2.1-3.9)
12.2%
13.8%
15.0%
13.0%
High (4-5)
87.8%
85.1%
85.0%
86.0%
We believe that a ceiling effect may be at play. These professors
are highly respected and extremely well-liked by students
regardless of their online activities. Despite the consistent ratings
of professors, some students self-reported that Facebook
interaction had had a positive impact on their perception of the
professor. No students reported that the Facebook had had a
negative effect.
We found that students had mixed reactions to the presence of
faculty on the site. Most (66%) of the 102 students who answered
the question “Do you think faculty should be on Facebook?”
indicated that faculty presence was acceptable. Many of the
remaining 33% raised identity management or privacy issues in
written comments. Interestingly, gender seems to be a predictor of
comfort with faculty on the site—men were over twice as likely to
condone faculty presence on Facebook (See Table 2). (Both of the
courses surveyed were taught by male professors.)
Table 1: Should Faculty be on the Facebook?
Yes
No
Women
35%
65%
Men
73%
27%
One student noted that the Facebook “can unfairly skew a
professor's perception of a student in a student environment,”
which indicates that she perceives the Facebook as a place that is
“owned” by students as a group. Another stated, “I think the
students should not have to worry about being monitored. The
Facebook should be a fun website.” Several students noted that
student profiles often contain information they do not want
professors to see.
Not all students’ comments indicated that privacy was their main
concern about faculty on the site. Some students conveyed a sense
of anxiety about interacting with faculty. Many students indicated
that the student/faculty relationship should remain professional
and should not be familiar or sociable:
Facebook is a more social network.
It's a social network for students.
They have no need to network with students for social
purposes. Faculty & students should remain separate when it
comes to social functions.
…if they "poke" me, I might find it strange.
Still, two thirds of the students surveyed reported that they are
comfortable with faculty on the site. Positive comments tended to
focus on the alternate communication channels afforded by the
site and on the potential for students to get to know professors
better. Students who raised privacy concerns seemed to be either
unaware of privacy options offered on the site (such as creating
special, limited profiles for viewing by specific users) or the
design of these privacy features did not conform with the
expectations and experiences of privacy they brought to the site.
(Note that the privacy controls on Facebook have changed
significantly since these surveys were conducted in response to
concerns voiced by the community.)
The next phase of this research involves in-depth interviews with
both students and faculty to obtain a richer sense of how social
norms are emerging on the site and how students and faculty are
negotiating privacy concerns and managing their Facebook
identities.
Goffman has observed that, when presenting one’s self to others,
the performer strives to maintain a great deal of control over her
persona and minimize the appearance of characteristics that are
contrary to an idealized version of herself (1959). boyd and Heer
(2006) have described the social networking site Friendster as a
complex (and often awkward) site of performance comprised of
various channels such as imagery, publicly articulated social
networks, and testimonials through which users attempt to exert
control over their public image. It appears that part of many users’
experience on such sites is a perceived loss of control over
performance as they address broad, unknown audiences that may
include peers, supervisors, subordinates, parents and—especially
in the case of academic communities—professors and mentors.
Social networking sites like Facebook offer tradeoffs to
community members who must balance the potential social gain
associated with new opportunities to establish ties and the social
pain of relinquishing some control over the presentation of self.
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was sponsored by the Intel Corporation through the
Intel Opportunities Scholar program.
5. REFERENCES
Arrington, Michael (2005). 85% of college students use
Facebook. TechCrunch. Sept. 7, 2005.
boyd, d. and Heer, J. (2006). Profiles as conversation: networked
identity performance on Friendster. In Proceedings of the Hawai'i
International Conference on System Sciences.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
New York: Doubleday Anchor.
Hawthornthwaite, C. and Wellman, B. (1998) Work, friendship
and media use for information exchange in a networked
organization. Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 49, 12, 1101-1114.
Stutzman, F. (2006) An evaluation of identity-sharing behavior in
social network communities. Proceedings of the 2006 iDMAa and
IMS Code Conference, Oxford, Ohio.